Blue Origami Cranes
by jasi jan
Summary: The first time she flashed him a coquettish smile was breakfast a few mornings later. They were waiting not to be found. Her hair, trailing up and down from ear to air, nutmeg colored, was like a rhythm he found himself to be entranced.


This is the first chapter-short and sweet-but much will be explained in the second. Let me know if this should be continued! Much of this is like the beginning of the last Harry Potter book-except the traveling and searching for horcruxes will be with Draco and Hermione.

Chapter I.

The morning shuffled beneath their weight; they stopped at the mountain, paused, and stared into the fogs of their breath. Sunlit snow fluttered in the breeze; glitters of constellations pricked their tattered robes. She shivered and bent, and he cleared his flushed nose.

"Bloody hell," he rasped. They'd been walking for an half-hour, and stopped for a moment to rest.

She hiccuped, and coughed deep in her throat. Dried blood crisped the edges of her lashes and streaked to her chin. She wiped herself and stood a while examining her reddened hands. Her hazelnut curls tumbled out of its loose styled bun, covering her slight face. She was silent. He presumed she was crying and felt immediately inadequate.

"Granger." She didn't look at him.

As the silence drew, he cleared his throat, and squinted his eyes as he looked up at the sky where gathering clouds, like raveled skeins of glossy white silk, drifted across the hollow turquoise of the winter sky. He felt trapped with her, in a situation he needn't be. His mind brewed a storm.

She finally glanced at him faintly with tear-stained cheeks daubed with blood.

"Another twenty minutes and we will be there."

"This is bollocks."

She ignored him willfully, and he noticed her run down face seeping in the white-washed glow, her pallid features growing grave, exasperated. _I am tired of you_. She was tired, but also frustrated and sad. He scowled at her sidelong glare. She pulled her toppled cinnamon locks into a quickly fashioned bun and turned from him. "Come on." She lead the way up the snow-covered mountain, and all he could do was watch her hair slowly trickle apart with every step she made.

They reached the beach house by dusk. Their quiet journey was cold and Hermione immediately started a fire. The living room was drenched in a watery shimmer, the last of the sun was fading on the Atlantic horizon. "We will be safe here," Hermione said as she turned on the lights. The large wrought-iron chandelier, and its handcrafted class tulips lit the room faintly. Draco nodded and sauntered languidly to the artfully cobwebbed armchair to rest his eyes. He fell asleep as soon as his eyes shut.

Hermione went to the bath to wash herself.

When Draco awoke a few hours later, next a warm fire and a quiet Hermione, her wet curls draping her shoulder, he decided to speak to her calmly and ask her for water. She offered him tea. She herself cradled a cold cup of amber, and she looked at him with an expression he couldn't discern. He drank the Earl Gray, unquestionably thirsty, dirty and muddy as well, and looked at her. He wanted to talk.

"So we are going to look for a horocrux. Here, in Scotland," he stated flatly.

She sighed, and cast a long look of intent at the fire.

"And Potter is presumed dead," he added.

"No," she said faintly. "Harry isn't dead. He can't be dead," she said, not to Draco, but to herself. She wrapped her arms around her legs. She had never seemed to him more exquisite. Flames danced across her face, creating new shadows, new light, new angles, new sad, sad features. She had almost mournful eyes, with a color so finely matching her amber tea.

Draco suddenly then decided that it was a charming house. High paneled wainscoting of olive stained oak, cream-colored frieze and ceiling of raised plaster-work, and brick dust felt carpet strewn with long solid fringed Persian rugs. He commented on her muggle grandfather's taste. She didn't reply.

"Bloody Potter," he murmured, sipping his cup of steaming bergamot, its orange bitters.

Daybreak broke over the ocean near six a.m. Mist gathered along the beach, rolling in and out with the tide like a lull. A white dust, tremulous cloud of violet-scented perfume hung in the hazy, frigid air. _Hermione. _

He sat up from the guest room bed, rubbed his eyes, and inhaled the scent deeply as if it were wine. The scent trailed, possibly from the sea breeze, from a few doors down. He couldn't sleep. He leaned forward, and for awhile looked at paintings of the sea over the heavy clusters of purple-lipped irises that stood in the center of the bureau across the room. He observed the seashells and ornaments that scattered the room.

Then, slowly, his finely chiseled nostrils grew tense and into a scowl as his own self-disgust flanked him back to bed.

_Mudblood._


End file.
